The Troubling Trendiness Of Poverty Appropriation

By July Westhale

It’s become trendy for those with money to appropriate the poverty lifestyle — and it troubles me for one simple reason. Choice.

I grew up in the far-flung wiles of Blythe, California. Never heard of it? You’re not alone.

Blythe has a population of just over 19,000, and at the time I lived there in the late ’80s and ’90s, it was one of Riverside County’s poorest towns. The primary crop was cotton, the average income was $16,000 per year (for families with more than three members), and the composition was 83% non-white — of those documented. The main profession was migrant work: day labor, cotton picking, crop dusting.

My family lived in Palo Verde Mobile Home Park, on the east side of town. The Colorado River and the border of Arizona were a stone’s throw away. Our corrugated home was surrounded by irrigation canals, where my uncles often fished and caught dinner, and where one uncle, years later, was found bloated and floating, death unknown.

It wasn’t what anyone would call a glamorous experience.

This background, this essential part of who I am, makes it particularly difficult to stomach the latest trend in “simple” living —…